NoiseTrade New Music Tip Sheet

Every Friday our NoiseTrade New Music Tip Sheet highlights three recommended picks from that week’s batch of new releases that we think are worth checking out at your local record shop or via your preferred online music distributor of choice.

Tuesday Night Music ClubSheryl Crow
Despite its 7x platinum US sales, four radio hits, and three Grammy Awards, I still maintain that Sheryl Crow’s brilliant debut album Tuesday Night Music Club is woefully underrated for how unique, iconic, and enjoyable the album truly is. Crow’s soulful rasp is at its most memorable on this album and over half of the smartly-written tracks are immediate singalongs after just one listen. “Leaving Las Vegas,” “All I Wanna Do,” and “Strong Enough” may have been the big MTV hits, but it’s the album’s bookends – “Run Baby Run” and “I Shall Believe” – that truly earmark the album’s greatness. Originally released in the late summer of 1993, Crow is celebrating the 25th anniversary of the album in style with its first ever US vinyl pressing on 180g double disc turquoise wax. As someone who has been wanting to hear this album on vinyl for years, I couldn’t be more excited about the Record Store Day Black Friday 2018 release.

“Rosa Parks” (12” single)Outkast
Growing up a hip-hop fan in Atlanta in the ‘90s, Outkast’s first two albums were downright inescapable. By the time their third album Aquemini was released in the fall of 1998, I was working my first post-high school job as a line cook in a restaurant and it was not an exaggeration to say that the album was played at least once (more often about 4-5 times through) on every shift for a solid 6-month period. “Rosa Parks” was the lead single from Aquemini and its infectious hook, bouncy harmonica break, and peerless Big Boi and Andre 3000 lyrical interplay turned it into an undeniable hip-hop classic. This 20th anniversary reissue of the 12” vinyl single for “Rosa Parks” features four versions (the original version, a radio edit, an instrumental, and an acapella version) and is being pressed especially for Record Store Day Black Friday 2018.

Cosmic ThingThe B-52’s
More than just the fifth studio album in their catalog that just so happened to produce their two biggest hits (“Love Shack” and “Roam”), Cosmic Thing from The B-52’s was an incredibly monumental release for the legendary Athens, GA band in the wake of the death of founding guitarist Ricky Wilson. Wilson was involved with the recording of their previous album (1986’s Bouncing Off the Satellites) but passed away before it was released. With the band not sure if they would be able to make another record, they split recording time with two adventurous producers (Nile Rodgers and Don Was) and created one of the most beloved and celebrated albums of their career. Come for the fun of “Love Shack” and stay for the all-skate invitational of “Deadbeat Club” and the space junk and laser bombs of “Channel Z.” This Record Store Day Black Friday 2018 reissue will be pressed on rainbow-colored vinyl.